


Ghost House

by susqueen



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dadza, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Phil Watson-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Real Life, Supernatural investigator, actually maybe the ending is going to be a bit angst but its just supposed to be bittersweet, character tags are weirdchamp, im sorry i forgot to add those earlier, its just to do with the ghosts' backstory dw, more tags may be added later :P, not any angst at all really, rated T for Tommy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susqueen/pseuds/susqueen
Summary: Phil was a supernatural investigator (though that was just the fancy name- it was more of 'ghosts-and-not-much-else investigator'), though he'd been low on work for a while.So, of course, when he got a call about a long abandoned house having movement inside, even with his suspicion about it just being some stupid teenagers, he took the case and went to the house. He needed the money.He just hadn't expected to unofficially adopt the three ghosts who resided there.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 60
Kudos: 320





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WOO!  
> I mentioned in my other book to watch out for a new book, and here it is! Sorry if its a bit more... bulky than how my other book was written, i swear it'll be the same as the other one later this first chapter just has a lot of descriptions

In normal circumstances, Phil wouldn’t have taken such a vague job.

All he got out of the caller is that noises were coming from a supposedly uninhabited house, the last owners had disappeared, and they feared it was something paranormal so they called him up.  
Normally, he wouldn’t take such cases because it was extremely likely that it was just some kids messing around in an abandoned house they’d claimed for their own. 

Now, the reason that he’d taken up this case was rather simple. 

Cases grew farther and farther between as he grew older. More people seemed to stop believing in the paranormal, and those who still did - mostly kids or younger teenagers - were stupid enough to investigate that sort of thing alone instead of getting a professional.

Also known as: he was low on jobs. And money. So, he’d take whatever he could without complaint (verbally, at least. He could complain in his head, and no one would ever know).

Though, standing in front of the house, it didn’t look uninhabited at all.  
It looked just as cared for as the other houses, save for the curtains being fully closed even though the sun was still high in the sky. Which, wouldn’t be all too unusual, Phil had known people to do the same in the past. But the backstory of this place, the missing owners, made it seem much more unusual.

He had his hopes up, that maybe there were actually ghosts in that house and it wasn’t a stupid false alarm, but even if there were some ghosts there, Phil didn’t get to decide what to do from there.  
He simply reported back to the client, who told him what to do from there. Oftentimes it was to kill the ghosts, others to just leave them. He’d never been friends with a ghost before.

He wished he could be, one day.

Not that it really mattered, though.  
What mattered right now was that Phil, again, had a client to please, and a house to investigate.

Finally stopping his staring at the house, and approached it instead. He tried the door handle, and, unsurprisingly, it did not budge. Locked, eh.  
But, Phil had a special thing for situations like these, locked doors and such, something simple and straight to the point- he had a lockpick, and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

Chuckling to himself at the wording of that particular thought, he searched his back pockets and quickly found what he had been looking for. Or, feeling for, rather. You guessed it! The lockpick. He had a satchel, but he didn’t put things like his lockpick in there in case he lost it.

He crouched down so he was eye level with the door lock, feeling almost like a criminal as he pushed the tool inside the lock, and turned it clockwise.  
It didn’t take long until there was a familiar click sound, meaning the door had unlocked. Phil had almost been worried that he wouldn’t be able to open it since he hadn't used a lockpick in a little while, but evidently not, he thought, as he slipped the lockpick back in the pocket where he found it.

With a small sigh, he stood back up and gently pushed the door in to open, pausing as he looked in.

That house, this house, it looked so- inhabited. Too much so for a supposedly abandoned house, and for a moment Phil was concerned that he might’ve broken into the wrong house. Luckily, a second look at the number on the house proved him wrong there, but he was still a little skeptical. 

As he entered, he realised a detail; this house looked cosy, but not so much lived in. There didn’t appear to be any personalised items, or if there were any they weren’t immediately obvious, and it looked more like a house ready to sell (or one only recently moved into) rather than something abandoned for a couple of years like the client claimed it to be.

Had he been tricked into breaking into a random person’s house? He hoped not.

He pressed on, though. He needed this money, and if this happened to be someone’s house who was, in fact, not missing, then hopefully they’d let him explain before calling the police on him, considering the police probably wouldn’t believe his… profession. Annoyingly, in Phil’s opinion.

That aside, the house was nice, if not for how ominous it felt.  
The entering hallway was neat and tidy, devoid of shoes or anything of the sort. At the end of the hallway there was what appeared to be a kitchen, and to his left after walking in was a glass door that led to the living room. 

Through the glass door, Phil could see that the living room looked just as mundane (if not more) than the rest of what he’d seen. The only thing that looked even mildly personalised in there was the Wii U to the left of the television, and the Wii remotes next to it.  
He’d reckon that could’ve belonged to the old owners of the house, the ones who disappeared, since it wasn’t like the Wii U was a brand new console. 

In fact, Phil had heard that they had stopped making games for the Wii U, which was a little strange because he knew some people who still loved that console. But, again, it was past his prime, he supposed. 

But now wasn’t the time to ponder how far out of fashion a game console was, though, he thought, walking towards the end of the hallway towards the kitchen.  
To his left from here was what looked to be a dining room, that looped round to the living room through a door (not a glass one, this time) that almost blended in with the wall. Phil decided that going in there likely wouldn’t help him at all, and it didn’t look like there was much in the kitchen, either, so he eyed the staircase to his right. 

Upstairs, then. There wasn’t much else for him down here. 

The stairs were curved to the right, and once he got to the top, there was an empty space in the middle, and doors to five different rooms around.  
To his direct left there was a small bathroom, he could see that since the door was slightly open, and the only other open door was the second door to his right, so he looked in there. It appeared to be a study of some sort, a desk placed to the of the doorway with a matching chair. There was a red beanbag in the furthest corner of the room, too, but Phil paid it little mind, glancing at the three unopened doors. 

It didn’t matter all too much, but he decided he’d check the room to his right first, and then the one to his immediate left. Then, he’d check the last room.

With a sigh, he opened the door to the room he wanted to check first. It was rather small, compared to some of the other rooms he’d seen so far, but not exactly tiny either. There was a bed in the far right corner, and a gaming setup on the left.  
It was… noticeably messy, actually. There were clothes strewn around in seemingly random places, the person’s headphones on the floor near the bed and many things just looking out of place.

He ignored the urge to go and clean it up . It wasn’t his business, he didn’t even know whoever owned this room, but even so, he just wanted to-

Slowly entering the room, he reached down for the headphones, just to put them back onto the desk with the other gaming things. Before he could actually touch it to move it, though, the door slammed behind him loudly, making Phil jump.  
Guess the… the Ghost didn’t want him touching their things, then. He moved away.

“Alright. Okay, sorry,” he chuckled, “But you doing that means I know you exist for real, so if your goal was to scare me it hasn’t worked. I was looking for anyone like you here.”

He held his hands up so they were fully visible, and walked back over to the door, slowly opening it and looking out at the remaining unexplored rooms. Hoping the others ghosts (if there were anymore) didn’t react like the one who presumably owned that room, even if the door slam was just in good fun and to try and scare Phil.

The next room was a bit spacier, appearing to have a small bathroom off the side for whoever owned the room. The room was more to the right-ish side, with the bed over there along with what looked to be a small sofa opposite it, with a guitar placed on top.  
Whoever had this room seemed quite spoiled, but he didn’t want to assume. Besides, at least they were clean.

Phil didn’t tamper with that room, however, and just moved onto the last. 

But trying to open up the door to that room revealed it to be locked. As much as he would love to break the door down to get in, if the ghost from earlier didn’t try and murder him, whoever owned this room would.

On the bright side, he thought, going downstairs, at least he knew there were actual ghosts here. It meant that Phil didn’t actually break into a random person’s house. (He wouldn’t admit in a million years that he had still been slightly nervous about that being what had happened). 

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, he took a right towards the kitchen, opening the glass door, because he wasn’t a ghost and couldn’t go through walls. Because he wasn’t a ghost. 

Reaching into his satchel, he pulled out a whiteboard and pen. It had always just been there, perhaps with the hope of someday using it to communicate with a ghost.  
Maybe someday could be today, Phil thought.

He placed the whiteboard and pen down onto the table in the kitchen, not stopping to ask about why they had a dining room and a table in the kitchen, then took a few steps away, not looking directly at the whiteboard just in case the ghost didn’t like being watched.

“I don’t know if you followed me down here, mate, but if you did, uh, I got that so you could say stuff to me. If you wanted to?”

A pause. Phil almost thought the ghost had stayed upstairs and he had just embarrassed himself by talking to air, turning his head to look back at the whiteboard, to possibly go over and take it back, but then-

The whiteboard pen lifted up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil 'talks' to the ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO! I'm late and its shorter than I wanted but.. better late than never? I promise not all chapters will be this short I just didn't know how to continue this chapter for longer!!!!

The whiteboard pen lifted up.

Phil froze in his spot, hardly daring to even breathe in case he scared the ghost away; as if the ghost were an animal rather than a (former) human. But, he hadn’t really talked to a ghost before, the ghosts he’d encountered so far had been less than friendly - and that was when there even _was_ an actual ghost!

Though he was regarded as one, Phil wasn’t exactly a professional ‘supernatural investigator’, as they called it. It had been something to get money on the side as a teenager, since he was into that sort of thing and investigating the supernatural didn’t exactly require a degree, and then he actually did well a few times.

Then word had got around of his existence and he got more jobs and got more well-known and it was really a cycle. When he was older and couldn’t find a proper job, he got by from what was originally just a fun side gig for some extra money.

Everything he learned from there was just sort of from experience, really.  
And, in his experience, he hadn’t ever really needed to know how to communicate with a ghost. Most of them weren’t very happy as a side effect of being dead, it seemed, but most of them weren’t great at containing solidity, either, so they could never cause true harm. Even for the few that could, Phil could just use salt (yes, the myth about that was true).

Though, this ghost didn’t seem quite so angry as they were amused at Phil’s suffering, for better or for worse. If a ghost wasn’t actively trying to form solidity or interact with things, he couldn’t tell where they were properly, which made dealing with one much harder.  
Even if they were interacting with things, as this ghost had, it wasn’t easy to track them down by any means.

For that reason and no other, Phil decided he’d try and make peace with this ghost. And, maybe the other ones that were here, too, if there were any. 

He wouldn’t be able to make much peace with the ghosts if he actively ignored what they were trying to say, though, so he turned his attention back to the whiteboard, where the pen had stopped moving, hopefully not for too long.

Cautiously, Phil took a step closer, just close enough to read it properly.

‘BITCI-’ was what caught his attention first. It wasn't rocket science, it was quite easy to tell what the writer had planned to end it with - ‘H’ - but it seemed that the pen had been snatched away and someone else had taken over writing.  
That, or the writer suddenly had a drastic change of mind and handwriting. Which Phil somewhat doubted for various, unnamed reasons.

The other part of the letter was much more formal, both in wording and in the handwriting (if formal could be used as a descriptor for handwriting, that is). 

_‘What brings you to our residence?’_

Something about that formality felt faked, unsurprisingly. Phil would bet actual, real money that the person who wrote that did not speak in the same manner, and he’d voice that if the ghosts weren’t waiting for some sort of response to the question from him.  
It practically confirmed his suspicions of there being more than one ghost based on everything he knew so far. It was a bit sad, though.

“Well… I’m a supernatural investigator, as they say. I look into cases like yours, and people give me money for it. I mostly just figure out if there actually is anything supernatural and, more importantly, if it’s-...”  
He paused, reconsidering his wording. The ghosts probably wouldn’t appreciate being dehumanised. Phil wasn’t fond of dehumanising them, particularly, either.  
“-if _they_ are hostile. If they attack me, I have to, um- forcibly put them to rest. I don’t like doing it, but I’d also like to stay alive. No offense.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, a bit nervous. It was hard to be truthful about what, exactly, he did, without being fearful of making the ghosts angry.  
Phil sure hoped they didn’t become aggressive, this was the closest he’d gotten to talking to a ghost before. Most ghosts already knew what he was there for and attacked him, unaware that they had more of a chance of ‘survival’ if they didn’t.

The ghost holding the pen appeared to pause, then they suddenly lifted the pen upwards and more towards Phil. Were they… fighting for the pen? He raised an eyebrow, lips quirking up a little for real.

He really hoped the client wouldn’t request he rid the house of these ghosts.  
They just seemed so familial. He wouldn’t be able to stand tearing them apart.

The pen appeared to be snatched from the side Phil was standing on; the side that the ghost just with the pen hadn’t expected, he guessed.  
The new owner of the whiteboard pen didn’t stop to think, they simply beelined past where Phil assumed the other two ghosts stood and wiped away what had been previously written, before writing out something new.

‘You aren’t going to kill us, are you?’

A different handwriting, again.  
It had been extremely likely, even before, that these ghosts were the previous owners of the house, but there being three basically confirmed it, assuming another wasn’t there and just hadn’t done anything yet. 

“I… Well…”  
Phil stumbled over his words, unsure of how he was supposed to explain that _it wasn’t up to him_ , it was up to his client, when the pen suddenly moved again.

One of the ghosts must’ve snatched it from the other, considering the movement the pen went through, but he hadn’t much time to think about that when suddenly the pen was flung in his direction-

“Holy fuckin’ shit!”  
Now, Phil wasn’t one to swear - usually - but that scared the life out of him. The pen didn’t cause any damage when it hit him, of course, it was a pen, but he hadn’t expected that and it was a bit shocking to have one of the ghosts suddenly throw a pen at him.  
None of the ghosts seemed to have moved since that, not that Phil would know if they did, considering how they weren’t holding onto anything physical anymore. They weren’t hostile, it seemed, but that didn’t explain why he just got a pen thrown at him.

With a sigh, he crouched and picked up the pen, holding it out for whichever ghost felt like taking it.

There was a pause, then one of them did pick it up. Finally.

“Now, I don’t know exactly why I just got a pen thrown at me, but I didn’t get to finish. It's not entirely up to me, you know? I just tell the client if there is actually supernatural activity, and then they tell me what to do from there.”  
He shook his head.  
“You all seem like nice lads, or lasses, but I need the money from this job unless I plan on not paying my bills. Sorry, mates.”

More sudden movement of the pen, and then, beneath the small handwriting from before:  
‘WE HAVE MONEY!’

“...what?”

The writing was wiped away, and more was added, none of the other ghosts getting in the way this time.

’You said you needed money to pay your bills! We have money! We can give you more than your client would!!’

“That-”  
Phil chuckled.  
“You’re bribing me. How do you even have money? You’re ghosts.”

’IM BRIBING YOU FOR OUR LIVES!’  
A pause in the writing. Then:  
’How I make money isn’t your bisness, bitch.’

A second later, the spelling of ‘business’ was corrected by the fancy-handwriting ghost. 

“Okay, okay.”  
Phil smiled.  
“I didn’t really want to kill you guys, anyway. You all seem nice. _But,_ I can’t go yet. If I call my client this early they might accuse me of lying. And they wouldn’t be wrong, but… we have to do this effectively, they might even show up here to make sure I’m not lying.”

_’That is all okay. However, if you happen to be staying a while longer, can you at least close our front door?’_

“What? I didn’t-”  
A glance down the hallway revealed that Phil did, in fact, leave the ghosts’ front door open this entire time. He grinned sheepishly, walking to the door to close it.  
“Sorry about that, I didn’t realise!”

Then, he walked back and paused.  
“You guys can hold the pen. Couldn’t you have done that yourselves? Why would you make me do it?”

’It was funny.’

“Oh, you… little devils.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't clear:  
> big handwriting is Tommy  
> italics is Techno  
> small is Wilbur
> 
> Also, to the person who said that the whiteboard would just say 'BITCH', thank you. That was a great idea and is why this chapter started with Tommy trying to do just that
> 
> Until next time, enjoy!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions, and games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo new chapter. sorry this took so long, school n stuff

Talking with the ghosts was a little awkward, admittedly, with the long pauses as the ghosts wrote to respond, but Phil didn’t want to push them to… materialise, if they weren’t comfortable with that.  
Which they probably weren’t, as well, since they hadn’t even told Phil their names-

Oh.  
Phil hadn’t told them his name, either.

“So… I haven’t introduced myself, have I?”

’you haven’t.’

How blunt of the third ghost.  
Oh yeah, that’s how he currently referred to them in his mind; in order of when they wrote to him. The one with the big handwriting was the first ghost, the slanted one was second, and then the small handwriting one was third.

Of course, he wouldn’t refer to them as that out loud, but it was easier to refer to them as that in his head for now so he didn’t get them mixed up. He doubted his would anyway, since all of them were quite memorable, to put it nicely, but as they say - better safe than sorry.

“I’m Phil. Well, Phil Watson, but no need for such formalities- just call me Phil.”  
He gave a small smile.  
“As you know, usually the norm would be for you lot to respond with your names, but I just want to say that I’m not going to force you to do that. You can stay as anonymous as you’d like. Actually, how would you feel about using code names? So I can refer to you individually without you having to give your actual names?”

There was a pause, and the whiteboard pen was passed again, but this time, whichever had the whiteboard pen also picked up the whiteboard. They wrote something, then passed off both the whiteboard itself and the pen to another ghost. That ghost did the same, and the last ghost walked over to him and held out the whiteboard.

With a raised eyebrow, Phil took it, and scanned over what they had written. 

_’Our code names:_

THE _Blade_

INNIT (isnt my code name so cool, phil? dont you think??) If this wasn’t writing, I would tell you to shut up.

Soot’

Innit, Blade, and Soot. It was a start.

He subconsciously smiled at the writing. They seemed rather close, assuming Soot wasn’t actually trying to be mean in their little note to Innit. 

“Your code names really are cool,” he reassured, mostly to Innit because of what they’d written. He held out the whiteboard again, and it was almost instantly snatched up by one of them - who, he didn’t know.  
Maybe, he thought, he could start to try to learn their heights from where they held the whiteboard and not have to guess who was who. Maybe one day.

There was a pause, in which Phil assumed the ghosts were talking, before whoever was holding it rubbed away what they wrote before, if the pen movements were anything to go off of, before scribbling something down.  
They tilted it in a way that seemed to Phil like they were showing it to the other two so they could double check what was written, though he’d never really know for sure, before something else was scribbled down and the whiteboard was turned around to face him.

’Come play something with us!! Be an Epic Gamer  
He means come and play the Wii U with us, if you want. To pass time.’

Phil paused.  
He’d played the Wii U before, with some of the younger members in his family. He wasn’t like many adults who didn’t seem to know how to use a computer, he knew how to use technology and play games, he wasn’t _fifty_ , but he hadn’t played the Wii U specifically very much. He’d never had his own.

“Can do, mates, but I’m a bit rusty. I only played that console a couple of times.”

There was a small pause before the living room door opened, loudly, from across the hall. Another pause and the door closed. He thought they invited him to play, as well, or did they not purposely shut him out?  
He glanced back at the still floating whiteboard and whiteboard pen, showing that at least one of the ghosts was still in the room with him. Unless his whiteboard had learnt to fly on it’s own, along with the whiteboard pen.

“You coming along?”

The ghost turned the whiteboard towards themself and rubbed off what they’d written before, and then wrote a message:  
’I’m not supposed to tell you but I’m currently stalling you so the others can change our Mii’s names from their real names.’

Phil raised an eyebrow, his next words sounding more like a question than anything else.  
“Well, honesty is the best policy?”

The ghost - Soot, as the handwriting revealed - turned the whiteboard back towards himself and wiped off the message again, before writing something new and turning it back around.  
’Yes, nobody sees it coming. I got you off guard.’

“You did, I will admit. Thought maybe the whiteboard and pen learnt to fly on their own.”

The whiteboard and pen shook, as if Soot was laughing. The thought made Phil smile, as Soot wrote another thing down and turned it around again to face Phil.  
’I should teach them sometime.’  
As Phil read it, Soot began to write something on the other side as well, and Phil didn’t have to wait long until he was shown that as well.  
’They’re done with changing the names. We can go now!’

Then, Soot turned around and began walking off without waiting for a response.  
Phil simply followed, unsure what else to do. He suddenly felt just a little out of place. 

They went into the front room, where two wii remotes were floating, and two more were placed on the table. Soot placed the whiteboard down on said table, then picked up both wii remotes and offered one to Phil, who took it.  
From the looks of it, Soot had the player four controller, and he had player three. He wasn’t sure what number controllers Blade and Innit had, but since they would be playing with miis anyway, so he’d find out which was which soon (he was thankful to have a way to tell which of them was which, for now). 

Looking towards the television, Phil saw that they’d already made him a mii. It looked weirdly like him, though he could swear there wasn’t hair like that in the mii maker, even if he didn’t often use things like that.  
Whichever of the ghosts was player one seemed to have taken notice of his confused look, as the whiteboard and whiteboard pen were picked up and they began to write something.

Soon, they turned the whiteboard round to face him.

_’We used to have a coder friend. He got us extra mii hairstyles.’_

Well, that revealed player one to be Blade. Since he already knew Soot as player four, that made Innit player two.

Phil huffed a laugh, taking a second look at the other three miis. Sure enough, those hairstyles didn’t exist in the normal mii maker, unless he was forgetting something and/or it’d gotten an update.  
All three of them were using male miis, from the looks, though the one with pink hair looked a little like a girl just because of the long hair. He could assume they were all boys, or he could ask to make sure-

“You three are all boys, right? Don’t wanna offend anyone.”

Blade turned the whiteboard back towards himself, scribbling something down and then turning it back.

_’Yes. Thank you for asking, though.’_

He nodded with a smile, ignoring Innit seemingly laughing at the question and then getting wacked over the head by soot.

Blade didn’t seem to pay much mind to it, either, by how he placed the whiteboard back down and turned back to the TV. He exited out of the mii maker, going onto the game they had selected - a game called Wii Party U - while Soot and Innit continued doing… something.

Once the menu of the game was opened, Blade seemed to pause, likely considering which game. Phil guessed he asked the other two of their opinions, with how they suddenly stopped whatever it was they thought they were doing before and sat back in their places.  
Or, Soot sat back in his place, Innit rushed over to Blade and stole his controller, holding it up seemingly so the other couldn’t reach it.

He selected one of the games surprisingly quickly, one called highway rollers. The game sounded alright.

Phil also got to see which was which. The pink-haired one was Blade, the blond one Innit, and the brunet Soot.

The game was not alright.

The concept was, if you win a game you get more dice. You roll however many dice you get and try to get to the end, with special squares and challenges here and there.  
The problem was; as familiar with video games as Phil was, he was absolutely terrible at these minigames (compared to the ghosts, at the very least, he didn’t know what the average skill level for the game was) and hardly got any dice to go forward with.

Needless to say, he ended up in last relatively quickly, but he had figured out who these people tended to target in the minigames where you could screw each other over. 

Innit almost always aimed for Soot, the opposite was also true. Sometimes, Innit would aim for Blade as ‘revenge’ for Blade always targeting him.

One curious thing he noticed, though- if somebody went for Phil while Blade was still alive, he would get them out of the game. In fact, the ghost seemed to purposely let Phil win where he could.

Which, don’t get him wrong, was nice, but he just didn’t fully understand why.

In the end, Soot won. It wasn’t too much of a surprise, really- Phil was horrible at the games, Blade kept purposely losing so Phil could win on the minigames where they could get the other two out, and Innit wasn’t doing the greatest when he had both the other ghosts aiming for him constantly.

It was almost homey, Phil thought. He liked it.

As Soot stood, most likely fist-pumping the air or something from the location of his controller, Phil’s phone went off, startling him.

“Ah- I need to take this.”  
He stood, pulling his phone out of his pocket and glancing at who was calling.  
It was the client.  
“It’s my client.”

He speed-walked out of the living room and stood beside the from door as he answered, “Hello?”

He noticed the whiteboard the ghosts used out of the corner of his eye, but ignored it in favour of listening to his client.  
“Have you found anything?”

Before he could respond, the whiteboard was practically shoved into his face.

_ ’Tell them theres no ghosts bc theres living ppl here’ _

The message seemed awfully rushed, but Phil did as it said anyway.  
“There’s real, living people here, so I don’t think there’s any ghosts.”

“Really?” they - the voice sounded more like a boy, if Phil paid close attention, but he wasn’t about to assume, “Can I meet them?”

Phil paused.  
“Yes…?”  
It sounded more like a question than anything, but the client seemed to accept it.

“Great! I’ll be there tomorrow~”  
Phil sighed as a beep signaled the other party hung up.

“They want to meet you guys. Tomorrow. What are we supposed to do?”

More writing.  
’Leave it to us!’

Phil raised an eyebrow, skeptical, but he let himself put some faith into them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not have made them have a Wii U specifically so they could play Wi i Party U... but sshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh no i didnt
> 
> The client wants to meet the invisible ghosts... now what? who knows.  
> btw the client is gonna be another cc, not an oc, i dont plan on making them an arse tho dw
> 
> hope you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil meets the ghosts - face to face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this ended up a little shorter than id like but..........yknow. its fine.

The ghosts had told Phil to go home after that, telling him to get some sleep before the oncoming day. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little concerned about what their plan was because of that. Blade had given him a house key, too - and, while that part could’ve just been for the convenience, he still didn’t trust whatever they had in store. 

He had gotten sleep, then, actually… and now he found himself outside of the ghost house. Phil did find it a little funny, actually; usually he’d have to work pretty hard to even find out if there was a ghost, and then they’d try to kill him after he told them it wasn’t up to him if they died.

These ghosts had not only been extremely obvious, but they had tried to _bribe him_ into tricking his client.

Which is what the plan was for today, so the bribery had worked. Well, maybe it was more of, he couldn’t bare the thought of possibly having to kill ghosts who took it so well. Well… maybe he liked them, just a little.

With a sigh, he approached the front door, about to open it, before he was startled by a voice he’d only previously heard from over a phone.

“Phil, is it?”

Phil blinked, having forgotten this person knew more about him than he did them. 

…

Wait. Why was the client here already?

He had never turned around as fast as he did then, blue eyes meeting bright green. Phil faltered, looking, unsure, at the other.   
They looked quite young, actually, tall but young, but he supposed he wasn’t the youngest person and quite a lot of people might qualify as young to him. 

They had dirty blond hair and, as mentioned and bright green eyes. They seemed to like green quite a lot, actually, since their hoodie was also green. 

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”   
They mumbled, seeming uncomfortable. Phil looked away with a chuckle.

“Sorry, mate. Took me by surprise, is all, didn’t think you’d be here already. What’s your name?”

There was another pause as Phil turned and unlocked the front door.  
“... I go by Dream.”

The kid already seemed uncomfortable, so Phil didn’t push for his real name. Instead; “Pronouns?”

“Huh..?”

“What pronouns do you use, I mean?”

“Oh,” footsteps indicated them approaching closer, “I use he, him pronouns. You?”

“I use the same,” he wanted to stall, unsure if the ghost’s plan was going to work, whatever it was, but he knew Dream would pick up on it.  
“You want to come in?”

He pushed open the door just as Dream responded with a curt “Yes,”.

Phil gave a nod in return, entering first as Dream followed.  
“I’m back!” the older called, pleading in his mind that the ghosts were ready and knew what they were doing.

There was silence, and seemingly no movement, and Phil worried. Dream seemed unsurprised, raising a single, unamused eyebrow.

“They should be here, I’m sorry, mate,” Phil managed, turning to Dream, “I can go and-”

 _”Wow, you can’t wait two seconds? You green men are all the same.”_  
Rang out a monotone voice, one that Phil hadn’t heard before. Surely they hadn’t actually…

Turning back around, Phil’s eyes fell on a person he’d only seen once before, and even then in mii form, but it was unmistakable.

There stood who Phil, over the day he’d known the ghosts, had known as Blade. He was dressed a little bit fancily, but Phil couldn’t fault home when he’d managed to materialise(?) at all.  
Blade didn’t even seem to care that much that they were there. Eye bags made him look tired - Phil wondered whether that was a dead people thing or just a Blade thing - and he just casually braided his pink hair over one shoulder.

“Hm,” Dream seemed pleased enough with Blade’s appearance, “and who might you be?”

 _“The name’s Technoblade-”_ Well, Phil saw where the name ‘Blade’ had come from, _“-but you can just call me Techno.”_

Dream hummed again, before turning back to Phil, who raised an eyebrow.  
“On our call, you said ‘people’. There's others?”

 _”My brothers. They’re upstairs.”_ Blade answered, for him.

“Can you get them?”

Techno, Phil supposed he should refer to Blade as that, now, used a strand of hair to tie off the braid he was doing before glancing to the stairs beside him, seemingly about to yell, before pausing.

_”Wil?”_

A voice rang out from the stairs, ”Yes, my dear brother?”

_”Were you or were you not just eavesdropping on us?”_

A figure stepped out from where the staircase was, a brunet, almost scarily tall if not for how lanky he was, as if walking was something he was unused to. He wore a sheepish smile. Phil hated how he recognised them only due to their miis, but that was how it went when all three had different hair colours. This was Soot.  
”Why, I’d never. It must’ve been Tommy.”

 _”Mhm, I totally believe you.”_ Techno spoke, in that tone that screamed ‘I-don’t-believe-you-in-the-slightest’. Also known as sarcasm. _”It was our kid brother who’s probably streaming. Makes sense.”_

”It does!”

“Sorry to interrupt, but what’s your name?” unsurprisingly, it was Dream who interrupted.

Soot blinked in the direction of the two, before his face brightened. ”I didn’t know we had visitors! Well, not yet, anyway. And Phil, you left the front door open.”

“What? I didn’t-”  
A glance down the hallway revealed that Phil did, in fact, leave the ghosts’ front door open this entire time. He grinned sheepishly, walking to the door to close it.  
“Sorry about that, I didn’t realise!”

Techno whispered to Soot, but in the stage-whisper style.  
 _”I don’t know about you, but I’m gettin’ deja vu.”_

”That rhymed!” Soot beamed, ”But you aren’t wrong. This has happened before!”

Dream fake-coughed, making the ghosts look towards him again.   
“Name?” He reiterated, annoying Phil a little. If Blade and Soot shared the feeling, neither showed it.

”Oh, I’m Wilbur! Or, Wilbur Soot, if we’re doing formalities. And you?”

“I go by Dream,” Dream said, word-for-word to how he’d told Phil his supposed nickname. He wondered if it was practiced, or maybe just simply habit. Or it could be a coincidence, and Phil was overthinking things.  
“Do you mind if I take a look around the place?”

Wilbur and Techno looked to each other, seemingly having a secret conversation with their eyes or something, before looking back at Dream.   
_”We don’t mind.”_

”But don’t open closed doors. Tommy will kill you if you interrupt his stream.”

Tommy must be Innit, Phil figured, since Soot and Blade were already here. 

Dream nodded in response - the kid didn’t seem to like saying things about himself, or talking in general for that matter. Phil didn’t blame him, but it surely couldn’t hurt anyone to be a little nicer about it.  
Then, he just walked past Techno and Wilbur, straight to the kitchen. Techno trailed behind the other green-adorned man.

Wilbur, on the other hand, watched them leave and then turned to Phil, who hadn’t yet moved.

”Sorry we didn’t tell you about this before. We weren’t… going to for a long while,” he explained quietly, ”But Techno - yes, Techno was the one who wrote that one yesterday - made the split-second decision to tell you there were living people. And we didn’t have much choice but to do… this. You know?”

Phil reckoned there was a lot he didn’t know, actually, but he nodded along anyway. He’d figure it out, eventually.   
“You said Tommy was streaming?”

Wilbur winced.  
”I’ll… We’ll explain that one later. Can you go warn Tommy that we already have visitors? I wasn’t lying earlier, I really did think you’d come later.”

“I thought Dream would come later, too,” Phil agreed, “Tommy’s room is…?”

”Closed door. Wait, Techno’s is also… It’s the room that the door shut on you, the first time you were here. Before the whiteboard?”

Phil nodded. “Keep an eye on Dream. I’ll go.”

Wilbur nodded as well, turning to go to Techno and Dream, who were talking about something Phil couldn’t hear.

Phil followed until he reached the stairs, at which point he split off from Wilbur and went up the stairs.  
Once he got to the top, he looked at the doors. They were the same as before, of course. He stared at the entrance to the room - Tommy’s room, apparently - before going over and knocking.

”What do you want, bit-”

Phil would bet that Tommy would’ve finished that, if not for the older opening the door and startling the teen not only with the door opening, but the person who was there.  
“Hey, kiddo. Your brother sent me…” he trailed off, waiting for Tommy to respond in any way.

He gave a slight nod, turning back to his computer, assumedly to tell his chat.   
”So! Yeah, chat, I’ll be right back…” he paused. ”Who is that..? Well, chat that… that is… my dad…? Fatherinnit! I’m going to go now.”

Tommy clicked a few things, and then leant back in his chair, covering his face.

The amusement in the situation was not lost on Phil, who chuckled. What a crap excuse for his chat.   
“I wasn’t aware I adopted you already?”

”Shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I had a penny for every time I updated this story when my other stories needed a new chapter more, I'd have two pennies. Which isn't a lot- but it's weird that it happened twice.
> 
> \----  
> iiii used dream for the client bc i felt like he was most suited to be questioning Phil's word at every turn and corner

**Author's Note:**

> See any mistakes or typos? Let me know!  
> I look to improve my work as much as I can, and I can't do that without feedback! <3


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